britgliderpilot

Some of the beta team have Vista. I'm not moving to Vista quite yet, and I wouldn't advise anyone else to either. But there are people who have tried BS on Vista, yes. I think some of them have it functioning well, so at least there'll be some form of support at release :)

Those last . . . four . . . five . . . six . . . seven . . . and the first one . . . are fantastic! :D And RB, that's the Aussie F-111 doing it's airshow party piece . . . . it's intentional ;) Oh, and mostly safe, too.

. . . . but F-16s don't have to operate under those conditions, so why design that into them? I'm intrigued by the photos of the chaps on rollerblades defodding things. Do the blades get a military designation? :D My favourite rough-strip aircraft is the Jaguar. I've seen a clip somewhere of one taking off from the grass along the side of the runway . . . . !

Re head movements in 3D In order to move the PoV position within the cockpit, you need an accurate and fully-functional 3D model of the cockpit. AFAIK it doesn't need that much more in the way of code changes. Lomac and FC do not have these full-3D cockpits. It essentially requires you to build a new cockpit 3D model from scratch. This has been done for the Ka50 in Black Shark, but not any other aircraft yet. It's somewhat time-consuming, and all ED's efforts are focussed on the Ka50. My understanding is that such models can be constructed by the community, as long as the animation arguments concerning the dials all tie up properly. Any volunteers? They're shooting at remote-controlled F-4 fighters. It's considered pretty good training :)

Welcome aboard :) Sounds like the Tech Discussion forum is the perfect place for you!

I wasn't a fan of chopper sims until they gave me BS. It's an extremely challenging experience, and really good fun ;) Given some of the changes that have been announced in Black Shark (for example, SFM for all AI aircraft), I think it's safe to assume that Black Shark won't be compatible with 1.12a in multiplayer.

My understanding is that if you supply a new 3D model - which is now possible with ED's conversion tools - then you can make an entirely new cockpit. However, every needle and dial needs to be assigned the argument that makes it move . . . which is incredibly time-consuming and nobody's yet bothered.

Ah, Viper Drivers . . . . Ruggbutt managed some clever editing there. The F-16 cockpit image is from Falcon 4. He's very carefully edited it into movies recorded using Lomac. There is some very experimental community mod work going on with new 3D models and textures to add new cockpits . . . but as far as I know the results haven't been that successful yet.

Don't know about that . . . but you might like this photo ;) An unladen airliner can do some pretty impressive stuff - though the clearances on the A310 display look a bit marginal. Are you allowed to fly over the crowds at Portugese airshows?

Might be marginal. A Sidewinder will suffice for flight control, but there will be some controls you'll need to hit while flying . . . It's not impossible, but it can be hard work.

All true, it's a superb gliding sim. But it doesn't include stuff like supercritical airflow (Mach effects), stores weight/drag, battle damage effects, recoil, hydraulics, engine models . . . so they can spend more time on the gliding stuff. There's just so much more to do in a combat sim . . . .

That's true for combat chopper sims - but to be honest the basic functionality of the main weapons systems doesn't differ much from the Su25T in Flaming Cliffs. If you know how the Skhval and Vikhr combo works, and can figure ripple patterns and rocket CCIP on the Su25T, then you've got a leg-up on the basic combat functionality on the Ka50. Note the words "basic" and "combat" very farefully :P Operating it is still pretty tricky . . . . but if you can both fly a helicopter and fly a gun/rocket/Vikhr run in the Su25T then you can take at least take a running start at Black Shark. Falcon 4 gives you a taster of the clickable and systems stuff you'll have to deal with . . . but that's secondary to controlling the thing. Pick either of the latest two Microsoft Flight Simulators, perhaps pick up a couple of addon helicopters from Hovercontrol, and practice until you can take off, hover, spot-land, decelerate to the hover over a certain point, circle-strafe buildings, fly NOE dodging scenery, make hard combat turns at ground level . . . FSX is particularly good, since it gives you the Missions with a helicopter of limited performance. After that, the Ka50 feels like a sports car ;) Oh, and watch the startup videos and read AirTito's account of Ka32 startup.

Perhaps you shouldn't have admitted to that - it seems it'd open up a whole can of worms . . . . IIRC it happened for Flaming Cliffs. So I wouldn't rule out the possibility of it happening - however, it will probably take more than a couple of days to familarise yourself with the helicopter and it's systems. If you don't have some kind of helicopter sim already, go get your hands on one. Previous heli experience will be invaluable when you start flying the Ka50.

Very sad :( Was down in the South of England this weekend looking at houses - purely by chance, caught a glider display team practicing for the same airshow . . . . nearly ended up going . . . I hope it's some consolation to his family - I know it'd be to mine - that at least he went out doing something he loved. After all, it's been the dream of pilots everywhere to fly Hurricanes for more than fifty years . . . . and he made it. RIP.

Mmmn. Polish MiG-21, Swedish Gripen, French Super Etendard and a Norwegian F-16. Do I win a prize? :D Some impressive stuff!

I dunno. The cockpit is a 3D model, after all . . . . so if you give the glass plates of the HUD a glass material, you'll get any reflections that normally apply to glass materials elsewhere in the game ;)

I'm not sure that answers the question - it shows the atmosphere acting on a stationary helicopter, but not the effects of that helicopter on the atmosphere. AFAIK Lomac and FC treat the atmosphere as uniform for all aircraft - hence no tip vortices or jetwash to fly into. It'd affect ground effect too . . . but then I think that's scripted even for the Su25T. I don't know if it's a change that could be made for Black Shark. Besides, the last thing BS needs is that many more CPU cycles . . . .

DFA? Downright Friggin' Awesome :D

That looks spectacular :D I'm beginning to wish I had time to fly FC still, so I could give it a go! I'll read through for full details in a bit . . . but could some of these tweaks and techniques be selectively applied to any unimproved bits of Black Shark, perhaps?

Yeah. The extraction parachute is the giveaway . . . . But I think the outside shot of a bomb being dropped is actually a shot of the US MOAB.

Oh, please . . . .

Mmmn. In order, then. 1. I don't know why ED claimed 2006 - it turned out to be unrealistic. But after having revised that info, there's no promise for Black Shark to be released in 2007. ED no longer give release dates, because if they slip there's an uproar. Now it seems that even if they don't give release dates . . . . there'll be an uproar. 2. You're quite right, this is nothing like the situation with the 1.02 patch. It's infinitely more complicated ;) Hopefully when Black Shark is released there will be a greater understanding about just why it took so long. 3. Beta Testers usually do have something good to say about ED or Black Shark. If we weren't enthusiastic about it, we wouldn't be on the Beta Team. And yes, we do handle some questions on the forums on behalf of the devs, because we can. Would you rather we said nothing at all? So we handle some PR tasks - but thanks to this little thing called an NDA, we can't tell you about the testing we do. And it's by no means a picnic. The community complains if they get a CTD, or a bug, or AI doing something stupid, or missiles never hitting, or instruments failing to work, or graphics glitches . . . . well by the nature of beta testing we have to go out and look for things like that. And then try and deliberately reproduce them. Trying to make a buggy program lock up your PC on purpose, and then find out exactly what caused it can sometimes lack a little fun. So can having to go through and report whether each light in the cockpit lights up at just the right time. So can having to watch AI battles over and over to see if they do it right. Clearly, laying hands on a sim in development can be rewarding - otherwise we wouldn't do it - but playing a broken game isn't always fun. Now then, the final point . . . do you think ED are just sitting on their hands with a complete product ready to go? Black Shark Just Isn't Ready Yet. As soon as it is, it'll be released . . . . but until then, the Beta Team have to deal with all the infuriating bugs that would cause the community to go beserk if they made it into a product on sale. Even "good business sense" can't cause programmers and testers to work twice as fast as normal. To pre-empt the next question . . . . yes, we're still doing the community a favour. See snide comments in innumerable reviews about being a paying beta tester for examples . . . . and as far as I know, we all still have to pay to get the release copy of Black Shark. Now go enjoy the Su25T campaigns and whet your appetite for Black Shark . . . .

Neither of those two explanations stand up on their own, and they're not mutually exclusive either. Saying that aircraft fly "because of Bernoulli" or "because of Newton's law" is oversimplifying the matter to a single point and is just plain lying. I've come to my own conclusion based on the theory available and common sense :P I've never heard one lecturer or instructor describe it all satisfactorily . . . but then lecturers are only interested in describing it through the use of maths, and instructors are only interested that you understand something about what's holding you up. C'est la vie.

Mmmn. The correct answer is all of the above and probably a few more besides. Essentially, you push air downwards and get a force upwards on the wing. The mechanisms that cause this are varied. I've just finished spending several years being taught most of them, and have come to the conclusion that unless you're involved in detailed aerofoil research, the details don't really matter :P

The Lift Vector points in the direction that you are generating lift. If you are inverted but flying level, yes, the lift vector will come out of the "bottom" of the wing. To put it simply - if you're flying at positive G, the lift vector comes out of the top of the wing, if at negative G then the lift vector comes out of the bottom of the wing. Since the vast majority of flying (although less so for combat and aerobatics) involves maneuvring at positive G, the lift vector can generally be treated as always emerging from the "top" of the wing.